Donna Jackson Nakazawa is an award-winning science journalist and an internationally-recognized speaker whose work explores the intersection of neurobiology and human emotion. Her book, Girls on the Brink: Helping Our Daughters Thrive in an Era of Increased Anxiety, Depression, and Social Media, was named a best book of 2022 by The Washington Post. Donna’s other books include The Angel and the Assassin: The Tiny Brain Cell That Changed the Course of Medicine, named a best book of 2020 by Wired, and the bestselling Childhood Disrupted, a finalist for the Books for a Better Life Award.

Her newest book, The Adverse Childhood Experiences Guided Journal (foreword by Nedra Tawwab), offers targeted writing techniques to help readers recognize the effects of childhood adversity and reset their brain’s internal stories for neurobiological resilience, and is based on Donna’s popular narrative writing-to-heal program, Your Healing Narrative.

Her writing has appeared in Wired, The Boston Globe, Stat, The Washington Post, and Psychotherapy Networker. She has appeared on The Today Show and NPR and is a regular speaker at events, including the Child Mind Institute, Harvard Science, UCLA Health, Rutgers, Johns Hopkins, Children’s Hospitals, and the Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine. 

Donna has been the recipient of writing-in-residence fellowships at the Corporation of Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Moulin a Nef. She received her Bachelor of Arts from Duke University and is a graduate of the Radcliffe Publishing Procedures Program.

She lives with her family in Maryland.

Learn more about Donna’s Speaking Events and Lectures

You can find her on Instagram @DonnaJacksonNakazawa